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Warner Brothers Pulls Canadian Previews
A number of readers let us know that Reuters and others are reporting that Warner Brothers is canceling movie previews in Canadian theaters, starting with Oceans Thirteen. A Warner VP said, "Within the first week of a film's release, you can almost be certain that somewhere out there a Canadian copy will show up." Recently, the International Intellectual Property Association placed Canada on its Priority Watch List, along with the likes of Argentina, China, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela. This community knows, thanks to Michael Geist, that the claim is mostly ficiton.
whatclaim ficiton
Too bad they don't do that here, too, so I wouldn't have to sit through so many previews just to see the movie I paid to see.
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
...it seems like everything's gone wrong since Canada came along!
... but where the hell is the correlation between a preview and a pirated full copy of a movie?
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
Promotional Previews are specifically released in order to help promote the film through positive word of mouth and newspaper reviews..
Do they really think this is somehow going to help them make more revenue if there's no buzz on the street, amongst friends and no reviews in papers?
Talk about stupid. The movie industry seems as stupid as the RIAA labels..
MABASPLOOM!
Learn how to spel.
Prediction: by August, there'll be a press release noting that revenues for Ocean's Thirteen and Harry Potter were low, and that it'sss all the faults of those tricksy pirateses stealing their preciousss, and that (surprise, surprise), the only solution is that the Canadian government "harmonize" its rules with the US by passing something equivalent to (or worse than) the DMCA.
Now what can we do as a nation to get them to pull their crappy movies from our theaters?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I think a preview is the movie, released a bit early.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Well.... If they're interested in preventing pre-release copies being available, I guess it kind-of makes sense. Don't show movies in theaters that aren't enforcing camcorder bans, etc. If they're trying to prevent piracy in general, it's not going to help much.
Who will this move actually affect? Are these the previews that Canadian reviewers would have seen? Or are these the "previews" ie commercials at the beginning of other movies? Or something else entirely?
As a Canadian, I don't really care either way. Of course, I never go see movies as soon as they come out anyway.
Can someone explain why its a problem for movie previews to be copied?
I don't understand..
Or are they somehow "punishing" us for making pirated copies of full features by pulling the previews?
How is this a punishment..?
Oh, wait... okay now that I've read the article: "Previews" here is referring to advance showings of the full-length film, NOT to "trailers"... Je comprends.
I thought they just meant getting rid of the previews you're made to watch before a movie, but they mean early preview screenings. Anyway, that's less US media in our Country. Perhaps we can go see movies from other countries, or our own country instead those days.
... On theglobeandmail.com below:
M .20070508.WBmingram20070508112009/WBStory/WBmingra m
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGA
The Globe And Mail is one of Canada's largest daily newspapers and has some amount of influence. Also, Mathew Ingram is somewhat influential in the "blogisphere" up north. I think he's hit the nail on the head. Too bad the studios won't be paying attention.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
In the GP's defense, they do say "THE FOLLOWING PREVIEW IS RATED whatever" before each trailer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Can be found here...
Within the first week of a film's release, you can almost be certain that somewhere out there a Canadian copy will show up.
Come, my fellow Americans, we can do this! We have a week to get our copy of Oceans Thirteen up! FTW!!
The studios know where the camcorder copies come from - they are marked such that the leak can be traced back even after transfer to DVD or VCD. As far as I know, it's not in their business interest to cut previews so odds are they have reliable evidence the leaks are coming from Canada.
I have a feeling that banning previews for _Oceans 13_ will only help its draw, by reducing negative word of mouth. Same for _Potter_; the fifth book was by far the least enjoyable.
I do have a few questions which might lead to concern for a studio exec.
1) Just how much equipment, in dollars, does it take to transfer a movie to DVD or an HD format?
2) Is this equipment easily transportable?
3) How long does the transfer take?
4) How much would it take to bribe a projectionist or theatre manager to allow someone in the theatre, with the equipment, for long enough to do the transfer?
Ok, I don't see how a company pulling its advertising is going to hurt me or the theater.
crazy dynamite monkey
How can you call something international when your own interest is protecting something from a single country.
All those thieving consumers out there need to be punished. I can only hope that the MPAA members carry forward with step #2 on their route to newfound profits: Stop releasing films, period. That will show those thieving consumers.
........ /sarcasm
Stop 1 - Make movies
Stop 2 - Don't release them to the public
Stop 3
Stop 4 profit!
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Hopefully this gets indexed by google and shows up first.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
...they're not even a real country aanyways
"Recently, the International Intellectual Property Association placed Canada on its Priority Watch List, along with the likes of Argentina, China, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela."
Undoubtedly encouraged by this War Criminal.
Thanks for the notice.
Pax,
K. Trout
Come on, we all know that despite a similar or larger number of firearms per person in Canada that violent crime and gun crime in particular is much lower there. It is obvious that having the opportunity to get cheap pirate movies keeps Canadians from killing each other. As such, I call on the US government to decriminalise piracy. Won't someone please think of the children!
If the United States did to China what China allows to happen to us WRT IP rights, I bet China's government would go nuts. If the federal government allowed piracy of every category of IP to flourish, and to flood the Chinese market with counterfeit goods ranging from clothes to cars, you'd hear an outcry about it.
The United States is really the only country in the world that people expect to respect IP rights. Imagine what would happen if the Department of Health and Human Services seized the patents on drugs made in Brazil because it didn't want to pay the price the Brazilians wanted.
Is it because we're "too rich?" Whatever happened to the Golden Rule and Categorical Imperative?
How in hell will i ever get to watch movies now if they ban the previews, OH wait true i'm 35, with a wife and kids, work all day, tired at night, doing basement over the next year, go to movies once in while when mother in law is available.
I DONT CARE, i barely have the time to go so who care if they ban previews, ouhh i'm missing out, are they going to ban it from video stores? no well i'll wait for the dvd.
Pirate copies,...tsk! the only thing they should do is feel sorry for the poor chaps who watches pirated movies on their 20 inch lcd screen hoping no one will shout in the audience or get up.
that's like masturbating with the braw section of any FREE women's clothing magazine, it's just a few and there is no alarm.
But it won't. Just checking around my office, the feeling is a resounding, "meh".
No, people shouldn't camcord in theatres, but if this is supposed to get the common citizen to get up in arms, it isn't going to happen. Fact is, I doubt anyone will even notice.
So in an effort to curb CAMCORDER pirated videos, they are getting rid of previews which will generate word of mouth, reviews, and more sales?!? It's not like we're talking about copied DVDs, or direct rips with full Dolby 7.1 surround sound, we're talking about PoC hand held camera recordings with a single audio channel, wiggling around through out the movie, with people blocking a chunk of the screen and audience noise over the movie...
I hate to break it to them, but anyone who is watching a copy of a movie from that medium was not in a position to actually buy a ticket or DVD.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
The only thing I can hope is that with all the self-doomsday predictions by the media industry about how they're going to go bust is that they suddenly actually do. That would be funny.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
... and stop releasing your crappy movies in Canada altogether. And while your add it, spare our friends in the rest of the world too.
Anybody want a peanut?
Most people would prefer to see a movie in crystal quality on a giant screen. The only reason people watch these extremely low quality camcordered versions is quite simply that don't have any other choice. Now, let's watch as they remove the other choice and just see what happens.
Canada might not have laws expressly against using a camcorder in the theatre, but 1) it is still illegal to distribute it, especially for profit, and 2) getting caught will likely get you banned from the theatre for life.
That's all there is to this...the only people who will be hit by this are the movie critics, and the MPAA is hoping they will raise a fuss about this...I *hope* the critics have a clue about this, and don't take the bait....
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
This is just BullFUD (a subtle and aromatic combination of bullshit and FUD). The **AA are unhappy with our relaxed and liberal IP laws up here, along with their inability to run around suing tens of thousands of us like they apparently do down there. So they've been trying to spread this bullfud about Canada being Piracy Central, likely in the hope of creating a bit of media noise and encouraging the current government to pass some draconian laws that would let them sue every canadian citizen at once. I already recall one /. story a while ago about how "50% of piracy comes from Canada" or some such crap, which was almost immediate refuted.
But, like all good PR strategies, truth doesn't matter, truthiness does. They'll keep throwing out these ridiculous statements, and trying to make headlines, and hope that eventually people just remember the fud, and not the truth.
The truth is that 25 million Canadians are much less of a source of piracy than 300 million americans. It's just a matter of numbers. All the **AA wants is some new laws so they can start suing us out of existence, and then they can frame the pirate problem as a European or Asian problem, stir up that xenophobic rhetoric, and then really encourage some strange new way of stamping out the "piracy problem" (net filtering, extradition treaties, etc etc) that they can't do while those Nice Canadians(tm) are still pirating up north.
Plus, we can't be evil pirates, most of us don't even have high-speed running to our igloos.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
I guess I'll just have to get my pirated copy from US industry insiders, or US movie reviewers... Who seem to be a source of 75% of all pre-release net-leaks... according to AT&T Labs anyway...
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
There seems to be a terminology misunderstanding here. Previews are the 2 minute ads before you see a feature film in a theatre. These are not what the article is talking about. Preview screenings are showings of a full feature film to an audience before it officially opens. For instance, when you see something in the paper that says "Go to Store X to pick up your free pass for 2 to see Ocean's 13 5 days before it comes out!", that's what the article is talking about.
;-)
It's not really hard to figure out where a film was camcorded from. Each motion picture print has a serial number encoded on the film itself which can be freeze framed and read on the pirated copy. You've probably seen quick flashes of red dots which seem like a defect in the movie when you're watching it in the theatre- that's the serial number flashing by.
In reality, this isn't going to do anything to stop camcording in theatres - it is only a tactic to get a rule implemented that a studio wants. But I will give them kudos for attempting to stop the creators and distributors of the pirated items, as opposed to harassing and suing the end user a la the RIAA.
Yeah, i'm logged in as Anonymous Coward because I do some preview piracy enforcement for a studio in the US. If it's a big film like Harry Potter or Ocean's 13 here, they tend to have a studio or agency rep there with security and night vision goggles to monitor the audience during the show. What the studio doesn't seem to get is that the majority of camcorded copies I've seen have come from the projectionist's booth. (In my experience, yours may vary.)
From a studio field rep and 15 year projectionist.
I'm trying to understand the movie industry's motives here. I have a few thoughts.
Punishment: They're hoping that having to wait a week or two before the release will so infuriate the Canadians that they will lobby their government to enact stronger laws. If this is the idea they're really out of touch. While there is a certain desire to keep up with what's hot and happening amongst ones peers, and this will lead to a lot of demand to see the latest movies, people do not have an overwhelming need to see a film just because some people in a different country have seen it.
Piracy reduction: I guess it is conceivable that stronger laws in other countries will prevent camcorder copies elsewhere thus eliminating this problem in the first week of release, or something. But how much of an effect do cams have on audience figures? The previews exist in order to promote the movie. Will the reduction in promotion really be outweighed by the decrease in piracy?
Statistical data: They are genuinely interested in whether stronger piracy protection in Canada would cut down on this sort of piracy. This could actually work. Seems a fairly expensive way to get some data.
Pulling advance screenings will help reduce piracy? Hah, yeah, absolutely. I wonder how many people in the MPAA are making their careers on spreading FUD about film piracy and pushing various "solutions" to it. Oh well, as if anyone other than movie critics really care about advance screenings much. I'm just surprised how aggressive and seemingly desperate MPAA/RIAA tactics have gotten in the last few months...
I like basketball!!1!
If the previews are pulled, and the Warner Brothers titles are still being pirated before they are even available to Canadians, then go look somewhere else. I pay to see movies I want to see. The odd time I will catch a free preview but that is a rarity. If the movie is of interest, I will pay to see it and don't care if there is a preview or not.
All this said, I really doubt that any correlation will be drawn from this.
We have to stop letting people in our movie theaters with cam-quarters.
Levon Barker
When in doubt, treat them all like criminals.
I love watching big business bully governments to do their bidding. That is, after all, what democracy is all about, right?
to Harpo to "harmonize" Canadian copyright laws with the U.S. This is part of his "deep integration" hidden agenda he's going to implement the second he gets a majority government. You know, all of those "extra" laws Canada has on the books that "hinder" trade? He's already sold the tar sands to the oil barons lock, stock and barrel.
Don't forget, the "piracy" claims come from an industry whose reputation for "creative accounting" is cited as examples of such in accounting textbooks!
So if we start pirating commercials before movies they will stop showing them also?? That is absolutely fantastic news!
Is the US about to declare war on piracy ?
in that case, id better flee...
I think that the wording on the story is a bit confusing. While it seems they are talking about previews (short snippets of the movie release to entice watchers, aka "trailers"), they are more likely referring to pre-releases (full releases to certain entities to generate hype - although often with identifying marks or distortions - before the official movies hit the theatres etc).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOzG7bBylRo hehe Oh my reletives hate that one.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I say good riddance to these preview screenings. The preview screening for "Miracle" almost caused m y girlfriend to dump me. Funny story...
I was doing the long distance thing for a while with the girlfriend while in college. There was a preview screening of "Miracle" at the movie theater, and as avid hockey fans, my roommate and I had to go. I tell the girlfriend that I'm going to see "Miracle" tonight. A few days later she finds out that "Miracle" was not out in theaters yet. It took some explaining to convince her I was not out cheating her and was actually at a special advanced screening.
It's about time that Canada got tough on insecure girlfriends and did away with the "convenient excuse" that is the Preview Screening.
PS. Save you're breath on the "slashdotters don't have girlfriends" comments. We get it. We're socially inept nerds. ha ha
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
And here I always enjoyed them Canadian versions of movies, all those "aboots" and the additional "eh" here or there always gave me a smile.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
The US, pushed largely by its entertainment industry, wants the world to share the wonders of IP legislation that it has foisted on US consumers. This pre-screening action will do nothing to stop piracy, since fuzzy video tapings of movies interspersed by coughs don't compete well with the pristine per-screening copies of movies that make up the majority of leaks. It will, though, give Bev Oda, our fearless Minister of Heritage, something to point at when her government tries to push through more restrictive IP laws. Politicians and lobbyists have perfected the art of whining and fear-mongering until they get their way. If Bev Oda were doing her job she'd be paying more attention to actual Canadian heritage. Perhaps she's true to the Canadian heritage of caving in.
...is that the movie industry seems to be of the deluded opinion that the regurgitated garbage it's shovelling these days is actually worth pirating.
The last film I saw which I actually considered worth seeing was Batman Begins, and even that was still an unofficial sequel. (Or prequel, if you want to split hairs)
That however is all the movie industry is doing now...remake after sequel after sequel after remake. There is absolutely nothing of any originality whatsoever being produced, and there hasn't been on a consistent basis for probably at least 10 years now.
Maybe that however is the industry's ingenious plan to stop film piracy; flood the market with crap to the point where nobody *wants* to pirate it. The only problem with that idea is that people will stop wanting to pay to watch what is being produced as well.
This is disappointing, I get my hands to passes for these preview screenings almost once a month. I have yet to see anyone with a camcorder though, I don't think they realized they can check for these things at the door. But then they wouldn't be able to whine and try to get DMCA North rammed through. Hopefully enough people make enough noise about how Warner is full of sh*t.
On another note, who actually downloads screeners, doesn't everybody at least wait for the leaked preview copies?
Can't say I was really looking forward to seeing Oceans Thirteen. Twelve just struck me as party amongst the upper echelons of Really Really Really Good Looking® society flouncing around in their "aren't we simply FABULOUS darling?" way while deigning to let us watch. One also gets tired of Mr. Clooney being the Sexiest Man In The History of This Planet or Any Other Since His Personal Image Consultant Taught Him to Stop Wiggling His Head Like That.
More to the point, if Warner thinks they can push Canada around with their fabricated numbers they are in for a surprise. The US isn't necessarily every Canadian's favourite country right now and bully tactics are likely to backfire. Plus, if Harper caves he will be judged as an American tody-boy and his Conservatives will find themselves back in the political outhouse for another 15 years, the same way they were after Mulroney sang Danny Boy to Regan like some desperately sycophantic wiener. Harper knows that so he won't be able to make our laws Just Like America, much as he'd love to.
You have to realize that Canada gave away a lot to get the softwood lumber deal, just to see American industry continue to sue us us, obstruct business, and pay off the government to ignore it's own obligations under NAFTA. Canadians are cheesed about this, among other things, so the idea of a puffed up American lawyer dictating how we should run our country is...unwelcome.
So to my American friends, don't worry, we'll take care of business on our end. It would really help, though, if you could slap these Napoleonic dweebs down a bit yourselves.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Wow! Warner Brothers lies! Boy, that's no news at all.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Take that, you Canadian pinkos. We will no longer advertise our products to you! When you come crawling back to us begging for mercy (e.g. with more onerous "anti-piracy" legislation), then we will perhaps reconsider!
:)
Seriously though, this reminds me of when I was receiving an unsolicited magazine/catalog in the mail. It kept coming every month for several months. Finally, one of them showed up with a sticker that said "If you don't order something, this may be the last catalog you receive! Don't take that chance!" My wife thought it was so funny she stuck it on the fridge, where it still sits. They weren't kidding though, the catalog really stopped coming.
I mean who the heck would pirate the previews themselves?
What's the point of pulling the previews if what is apparently pirated is the movie itself? Without the previews they will lose revenues....
The flaw in that logic is assuming all movies are equal in terms of revenue.
Hundreds of movies will see limited theatrical screenings and certainly never make it to pirate DVD because they're worthless to the pirates. Whilst a movie like The Station Agent is an undeniably great movie, short of winning awards, a movie about an anti social dwarf trainspotter isn't going to get the interest of many people buying pirate DVDs.
60 movies a year still equates out to the most popular new release every single week plus the secondary releases on more popular weeks.
Pulling numbers out of the usual spot: Assuming a curve that averages out to 10 movies that make $100m at the box office, 20 that make $50m, 30 that may $30m, 100 that make $10m and the remaining 1200 that make $2m in limited indie showings, you have a total box office revenue of $5.3b of that, the 60 highest earners make 2.9b. Thus under 5% of all movies account for almost 55% of all revenue.
So, Geist makes it seem as though piracy only affects 5% of the industry and thus claims of being affected by it are laughable. What he conveniently misses is that it affects the highest budget 5% that likely accounts for a huge percentage of actual revenue.
It's about on a par with Microsoft saying they're not monopolistic because they only provide one of the hundreds of OS variants out there. Technically it's true but very conveniently ignores the actual proportion of the market their one OS occupies.
Claims of piracy, true or false, mean nothing. They can do what they please. Films are not a right. If they don't want to show them in Canada, or the US for that matter, so what.
I really wanted to watch Ocean's Thirteen in theaters, but now that I have to wait I'll just download it instead.
This community knows, thanks to Michael Geist, that the claim is mostly ficiton
ficiton (noun): an imaginary particle, spontaneously generated by media company executives (morons), to rationalize irrational behavior. The process of emitting and absorbing ficitons is termed con-fusion
.Soylent Green is peoplicious!
What makes you think that any patents not filed under the PCT are enforceable outside the region they are granted in?
Just because copyright has gone nuts, patents will have to follow?
I mean, the best way to make sure that their movies are safe is to keep them out of the country.
And they're going to use the money the don't send down south to the US to create a movie industry in Canada.
Oh wait, they're already here and their cameras are going to be available? Saweeet!
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I am in Canada, I saw an early promo screening of "Serenity" and the paranoia was laughable, they were confiscating anything electronic that might have a camera (cellphones etc..) and they came in several times to scan the audience. It was plain silly, I felt like I was in a police state.
I think they should actually follow through with the previous threat and delay all movies in Canada by two weeks, that will be long enough for everyone to get the real buzz on the movie and should result in substantially less people being suckered by hype. Then they can find someone else to blame.
But let's face it, this is not really about Canadians camcordering movies. This is all about greasing public opinion for an attempt to intro more draconian copyright laws in Canada so we can enjoy the benefits of industry lawyers threatening our 12 year old kids and grannies with lawsuits about something they might have infringed and then forking over the money because they are too scared to fight.
My hope is that our current minority government situation will make such draconian changes much more difficult to pass.
... That they are bitching about this over the past year or so given that Canada's dollar has gained nearly 30 cents on the greenback since 2002...
Now that they can't get AS cheap a deal when they make their films here they piss and moan about an alleged problem. To echo a poster on the Globe & Mail site, if I ever saw someone with a camera (and I never have) I would be more than happy to disturb their movie going experience.
Like I'm going to buy a 2$ copy of a movie. If I like the movie I'll buy it. If I don't, when you've already fleeced me out of 13$ so to hell with you.
I Like Pie...
Well, I'm now going to boycott Warner and all of their affiliated studios. I hope this is the result that they were looking for.
I wasn't even aware there *were* preview showings until I read this. It's hardly something that affects the ordinary person is it?
1. Assume I, as a Canadian, am a criminal, or at least paint me with the same brush.
2. Stop an industry-standard practice which works both as advertisement and as a consumer appreciation gesture.
3. ???
Sorry, I don't really see how I could work a "4. Profit" in there. A policy which suggests I may be a criminal isn't going to endear me to your industry, MPAA.
it will be a pleasure to not be forced to sit through the movies, Warners.
how 'bout you pay me to stay home, that's the next step...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
A few years back I went to a preview of a Disney movie (don't ask, was in a new city with some friends). Upon entering the theatre we were asked to submit to a bag inspection (we were University students, so we all had backpacks) and metal-detector wand, followed by a full body pat-down. This wasn't a security thing, it was very explicitly to check for camcorders - as this was back when people actually cam'd movies. They even had a big sign stating this.
This was one of the reasons I began to hate the movie industry, and have since declared personal war on Disney. It was a shocking and quite frankly humiliating experience, but it all happened in such a way that by the time it was finished (a few seconds) I was just stunned, standing there thinking "WHA??". Several hundred other people went through this without blinking an eye. I would have gotten a lot more uppity about it and walked out screaming at the manager if I had known how to get home (like I said, new city, and my friends saw nothing at all wrong with this sort of treatment).
The movie industry has been treating us Canadians as criminals for a long time already. Don't want to show us previews? GREAT! I'll take the fewer strip searches, thanks.
What's funny is that this happened before those "don't steal movies or this production worker can't feed his kids" nonsense ads started running. Those offend the heck out of me, but never really surprised me - I was already shown just how much of a criminal a paying customer appears to the movie industry.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Though I know the "proper" term is trailers, everywhere I've lived has called them "previews".
The only place I've truly seen them called trailers is online.
I've never heard of early showings being called "previews". I always thought they were called "screenings".
Hollywood movies have been such abysmal boring shit for the last few years, I hope they just stop showing them here in Canada.
Blame Canada, Blame Canada
There are 10 types of people in the world, those who know binary and those who do not!
You will not lose 1 single sale to a movie filmed in a theater.
Under the best circumstances the quality is crap.
Please get a grip,
Long time paying customer.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Here's the one they actually link to on their front page, and the one they will most likely print.
M .20070508.wpreviews0508/BNStory/Entertainment/home
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGA
Same story, minus the input from Geist or anything that even remotely questions the veracity of Warner's claims.
What did you expect? If you follow the money, the Globe has more in common with the american media conglomerates than the interests of Canadian citizens. I'm afraid Canadian citizens are pretty much on their own when it comes to fighting "lawbook terrorism" like we're seeing here. The sad fact of the manner is that our media won't tell the whole truth because its not in their own self interest. Heavily paid lobbyists will con, bribe, or outright lie to our politicians until they try to pass the kind of legislation Warners and the MPAA watches. With our own media utterly failing to inform us, most Canadian citizens will be subject to new laws that are not in their own best interest before they hear a word about it.
Thankyou, american megacorps and media conglomerates, for destroying journalistic integrity around the world and undermining democracy everywhere.
Not Ocean's Thirteen!! I'm utterly distraught that I'll (would, if I lived in Canada) be denied the dubious pleasure of sitting through Ocean's 13. I had it all lined up as the life-changing experience of a lifetime.
Come to think of it, at the moment of all the films released each year the difficulty facing the Oscar awards panel isn't so much picking the best from a glowing throng of movies as picking the one that stinks the least. (Which makes it even more extraordinary that they always get it wrong...)
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
So where does the US sit on these lists of pirate nations? Naively my belief is that the rate of piracy is approaching 10x that of Canada or at the very least linked to broadband access. The count of such users must be higher in the states.
Perhaps the studios will enforce the same south of the border only opting to preview at The Vatican.
It seems Warner Brothers has been after Canada for quite some time.
In the 1999 film Southpark: Bigger Longer and Uncut, Canada was blamed for the corruption of Americas youth.
Warner Brothers was a distributor of this film.
So let's have some fun, list all the other movies Warner Brothers has made that cast an angry light on Canada.
Seriously - few people go to the movies more than once per year and who gives a flyingfsck about previews?
Anyhoo, I don't believe that movies are ripped by paying goers using camcorders. These things are ripped by professionals with telecini boxes. It is organized criminals and we don't need new laws to combat it. Laws do nothing. Old fashioned Policing is required.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Anyways we all know that the Canadian copy will show up.
Are these people really that stupid? I mean, honestly. They think stopping sneak-previews in Canada is going to have any impact AT ALL on movie piracy?
Well, I say good riddance! Last year I won a free sneak preview to some martial arts movie (ultimately distributed by Alliance-Atlantis, I believe). They had guards at the entrance to the theatre proper, with an upper-level employee of the theatre taking people's cellphones! For some inexplicable reason, the distributors believed people would record the movie on their camera phones an upload it to the internet. This is for a movie that had already been out for about a year or so in Hong Kong!
What's worse, people just handed over their cellphones -- contact lists, call histories, stored images, and all -- to these strangers in exchange for a free movie viewing. I tried to just ignore them and walk into the movie, but they stopped me and demanded I go thru their rigamarole. I made a bit of a fuss, then just left.
They were fricken' wanding people before they entered the theatre, for goodness sake!
I wrote a bunch of letters to the theatre and the distributor, but no one seemed to care.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
...define and execute their own agenda. *SAY CHEESE*
Someone's going to have to explain to me why this measure, designed to stop people filming a copy of a film then distributing it, has anything to do with "My Rights Online".
When did I get the right to see a movie for free?
And if it DOESN'T make a difference in overall box office, THEN what will be their excuse?
and I just took a note to pirate the shit out of Ocean's Thirteen. Warner Brothers... why did you do something so stupid? It can only hurt you.
The real effort here is to back up an announced lobbying effort to get the current government to pass a law making "camcording" an indictable offense under the federal Criminal Code.
A spokesman for the Canadian equivalent of the MPAA was interviewed about that yesterday on the national radio network, CBC, saying just that, and pointing to the Warner Brothers action as justification
Of course, the copying is an inside job, as orclevegam noted, so I predict that in the hearings on the law, "camcording" will b replaced with "copying", thus making any copying of DVDs a federal crime.
Much better than that wimpy U.S. law (:-))
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
> Warner Brothers is canceling movie previews in
> Canadian theaters, starting with Oceans Thirteen.
Thank god.
I am Canadian. I for one have never seen a "Preview". So who exactly gets to see these things anyway? Movie people? Rich People? Famous people? People involved with the movie is some way? Theater employee's? Anyway this certainly won't effect me, nor most people. The few tiny amount of people this does effect, well who the hell cares? If it means that someone won't be able to see Rush Hour 4, a week earlier than everybody else, well so be it! This is hardly an important issue. It will at least prove when all the illegal copies still keep coming out that they are full of shit and that Canada is not the issue they claim it is. If it will shut them up about us, well I say I am all for it, as I am sick of being called a criminal.
It is already illegal here to make cam copies of movies, what more do they want from us? Maybe if new release DVDs didn't cost 25 dollars for no reason, we'd be more inclined to buy them.
"Canadian releases delayed to pressure government into allowing media cartels to rewrite copyright laws"
You can't take the sky from me...
You dont pay tax on cuban cigars. Cuban cigars are smuggled in, no cuban items are allowed for sale in the US. Right. What country is mentioned in the title of this article? Starts with a C... No trailers? We need this 'punishment' where I live. Make children under the age of 18 unable to see movies after 9pm and I'll be at the theater a lot more often. Is the word "trailer" used in this article? Or are they talking about previews: Advanced screenings.
Also, children over the age of 18 are still ok, right? So long as they stay off your lawn, of course.
You can't take the sky from me...
And this is why the rest of the world thinks Americans are stupid.
Personally, being an American, I have heard the word preview as a trailer. It is the word used in the theaters in America.
However, this was my thought process:
"Blocking previews? That doesn't make much sense. Oh, they mean preview screenings of full films."
Ta Da.
That is what happens when Americans (I am sure I'm not the only one, but reading slashdot, sometimes I wonder.) actually use their brains to work out issues before typing responses into websites.
signed - non-genius but sentient American...
First, the preview relates to a pre-screening of a movie. Second, I don't blame them, in Canada it is not illegal to bring a camcorder into a movie theater. Obviously, the theater can ask you to leave, but you cannot be arrested. Two things have lead to an explosion of cam/tc/ts piracy. First, the audio jack supplied to hearding impaired listners. Audio sync was the largest problem with pirated copies, now it has been eliminated. Second is cost/time. It is much easier to watch a movie in the comfort of you own home (stop, play, rewind). Or lug the kids and wife to the movie theater, and pay $10 for sugar water and over salted popcorn. And what if the movie sux, you barter with the theater to get your money back, ya right too much of a hassle. Tha'ts my 10 cents (my 2 cents is free).